Party donations: Labour receives £3 million from unions this year

The latest figures on donations to political parties have been released. Photo: Fox Photos/Getty Images

It’s time to find out which parties are in the money, thanks to the latest Electoral Commission information on party donations. According to the figures for Q1 2014, the Tories have received £6.7 million in donations (up from £3.7 million in Q1 2013) and Labour £4.4 million (compared with £3.7 million last year). It’s not surprising that donations are up because we’ve entered an important election season. Most of the donors are not new, so here are the top five donations to the Conservative party in 2014 so far, compared with last year:

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Michael Hintze: £1.5 million

James Lupton: £258k

Michael Farmer: £258k

Alexander Fraser: £200k

David Lilley: £200k

And the top five donors to the Labour party in 2014:

Chart

Unite the Union: £1.8 million

Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers: £692k

Unison: £420k

Communication Workers Union – £142k

Andrew Rosenfeld – £100k

The other parties received plenty of cash too — the Lib Dems brought in £1.1 million (up from £800k on the same period last year) and Ukip took £493k, a huge increase on the £75k they received in Q1 2013. The SNP also brought in £1.1 million, a 100 per cent increase from Q1 2013, thanks to two £500k lumps from lottery winners Christine and Colin Weir.

There are other interesting facts in these figures. First, Labour is still very much in hock to the unions. As Isabel pointed out in September, when the last batch of figures were published, the party is dangerously vulnerable to collapse if the unions cut funding — 75 per cent of their funding, as Grant Shapps has been eager to point out. Secondly, the two main parties are both in debt, albeit at very different levels. Labour has outstanding loans of £12 million, while the Tories owe £1.9 million. The worry for Labour (especially with the withdrawal of the Co-op’s generous assistance) is whether it can service that debt.

UPDATE: It’s been reported on LBC this evening that Unite the Union have front loaded their Labour donation for 2014 into this quarter alone.

Unite the Union donated £1.8m, Mr Cameron has said many times Unite has bought Mr Milliband and the Labour party. So by the same Cameron logic, Michael Hintze by his donation of £1.5m as bought Mr Cameron and the Conservative party. Further more the following have received cash donations from Mr Hintze: George Osborne, David Willetts, Liam Fox, Theresa May, David Davis, Adam Holloway, Boris Johnson, and William Hague.
So what has he received from a party with a leader who could win a general election. The first thing that comes to mind, a reduction in the 50% tax rate to 45% with a Mr Cameron/Osborne’s promise to cut it further to 40%.

SgtVimes

Labour isn’t in hock to the unions, its the political wing of the workers movement. Always has been.

It is entirely likely that UKIP will do well in the local and EU elections. Although one in 10 previously elected UKIP councillors have since quit. If UKIP win all the EU seats it will mean they have about 10% of the total of 751. Nothing much will change as it is the Commissioners who hold the real power. So when the shouting golf club bar room bores who constitute the UKIP claque look out of their windows the morning after the election Britain will not have somehow reverted back to 1950.
If any of the much vaunted Black or Asian UKIP candidates get elected to the EU parliament they will, as a result of UKIP’s membership of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group, find themselves having to associate with people who have, amongst other things, called black people ‘orang outangs’.
A recent YouGov poll showed, for the first time a lead of 6% of those polled would vote to stay in the EU in a referendum.

you_kid

We once again call for a cap all donations and demand political party funding by vote count. The much better deal for Britain, surely.

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Miliband wants a £5,000 cap on individual donations…… But will this mean the “individual” members of the Unions will still be allowed to channel their money via the Unions?

you_kid

FAQ that – why are you not listening.
Cap it at £50.00 – a much better deal for Britain, surely.

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Why cap it per person? Why not make it 500k max for both?

Wessex Man

No it’s not, these sc**bags take enough of our money already!

EU thrall

UKIP are our only hope!

crackenthorp

our only hope of going down the plughole

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

We already have, wake up, the EU are destroying our country.

telemachus

Farage “I am Spartacus”
We can but hope

*

After the army of former Roman slaves led by Spartacus is defeated in battle by legions of the Roman army, a Roman general stands before the captured surviving members of the slave army and demands that they turn over Spartacus, or else all of the former slaves will be executed. Upon hearing this and not wanting his friends to be executed, Spartacus stands up and says “I am Spartacus.” However, the loyalty of his friends is so great that each of them stands forward in succession, shouting “I am Spartacus!” until the shouts dissolve into a cacophony of thousands of former slaves each insisting “I am Spartacus!” Bewildered and still not knowing which of them is Spartacus, but impressed by the loyalty he inspires in his army, the Roman general has all of the slaves crucified in a miles-long display alongside the Appian Way leading back to Rome.

Have you never seen “Spartacus”? Or are you genuinely so patently stupid that you thought the above?

Colin

The UNITE / Welfare party is virtually bankrupt. A loss in 2015 could be the coup de garce. One can but hope.

crackenthorp

fruitcake and wrong

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

liblabcon, who cares, we’re ruled by the EU.

HookesLaw

No we are not.

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Why do you refuse to look at the facts?

southerner

They get in the way of his Camerluvvie worship.

telemachus

I guess what you are really saying is that individual human rights are less important than the narrow political point of Westminster Parliamentary autonomy
Well my Father and my Uncle fought in WW 2 to ensure that the rights of the individual trumped the state
And after victory successive British Governments worked very hard to ensure that these principles were enjoyed by all the peoples of Europe
*
I guess you would seek to deny them

wycombewanderer

They might well wonder why they bothered given the outcomes for you and for Europe!

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Telemachus’s antecedents must be very ashamed of their Marxist successor.

telemachus

They would be heartened by the 70 years of peace entrenched by the welding together by the European Bonding

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Which was based on a trade agreement not dictatorship, they were fighting AGAINST a dictatorship of Europe.

telemachus

So why do you not engage to change the rules
Why does Farage do nothing other than barrack in the European Parliament
If predictions of electoral success next Thursday come to fruition he will fully have negated the UK voice in Europe
The disgrace of a man is anti democratic

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

How is he undemocratic? He wants to restore our democracy, rather than unelected bureaucrats deciding our laws.

Get it right it’s the commission and the EU parliament that make the law. The Lisbon treaty changed the system and gave parliament equal rights with the commission.

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

That doesn’t contradict what I said.

Wessex Man

If you actually knew anything about the workings of the EU, you would know that it was UKip who spotted that in a subclause on Fishing that the Commissioners had inserted that would have taken away our territorial waters.

Your hatred of UKip is so blind that you actually hate your own country!

telemachus

I hate racist organisations trying to destroy all that I have ever held dear

Not at all, I would prefer my elected representatives to decide my own laws in my own country.

telemachus

Harmony of views economic prospects and justice are central to the work for peace we have all pursued since 1945

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Their power has reached too far, their is very likely to be a war in the EU, the whole of Southern Europe now hate the Germans and the Germans hate the south. What you have now is an EU dictatorship.

telemachus

On the contrary the EU has bound the Greeks in and precluded further Colonels, the Spanish precluding a latter day Franco and the Portuguese precluding a latter day Salazar
The Greeks peered ove the abyss but elected, yes elected to stick with prosperity and the Euro
Your scare mongering does not hold water

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

That is a lie, the Greeks were promised a referendum but then their leader was replaced by an EU puppet, now every 2 weeks a plane full of Eurocrats lands and sets their interest rates and decides everything for them then leaves. The Greeks are being kept as hostages of the EU.

You nasty litle person, to invoke the millions who fought in the world wars to maintain your lies is really the lowest of the low. We are in likelyhood going to have a war in Europe because of the ‘Doves’ of the EU ferment revolt in the Ukraine, we all saw them there so don’t deny it.

It was NATO that saw off the Communist threat not the ECC then the EU of which it’s President stated that he saw the EU as an Empire covering Europe and beyond!

telemachus

You should read the aspirations of the founders of the Common Market and subsequent statements by French and German Leaders
And the go and read for example Christopher Clark’s sleepwalkers or Max Hasting’s Catastrophe or the very persuasive Bullock’s Study in Tyranny

Mynydd

Next week you can vote for your representative to decide the laws in France, Germany and all the other countries in the EU.

You have previously said you wanted to stay in the EU, yet are a Tory voter, do you not trust “call me Dave’s” “cast-iron guarantee” of a referendum in 2017?

Wessex Man

Hooky quite often says the first thing to enter his head, he never has a mind open to anything not Tory Blue much like tele for labour. It’s this dog like devotion from people like them that in the past has kept the rogues in power, but no longer

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Either way he won’t be voting Tory…… Unless he thinks Cameron is a liar about giving us a referendum, in which case why vote for a liar?

The logical answer would be not to vote.

HookesLaw

UKIP ‘are’ their donor.

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Wake up, it makes no difference who wins out of liblabcon, they are the same party!

A Labour MP who likens himself to Obama said UKIP are “the establishment” despite UKIP never being established anywhere and wanting to alter the current establishment beyond recognition…….. So are the establishment (literal sense) not the establishment?

Was this in the commons, or some other bipartisan event?

Wessex Man

probably in you_kid’s head.

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Can he also not see how the media are against UKIP?

E.g.

UKIP’s use of a candidate on a poster was reported extensively Labour’s use of SEVERAL candidates never made it out of Hackney.

And apart from the lottery winners the Scot Nats could only rustle up £100,000.

Kaine

So, the Tories got a bunch of money from rich individuals allocated on their whims, and Labour got money from millions of working people allocated by democratic votes at policy conferences?

And this is news?

John Dalton

Who is Michael Hintze, why is he donating so much to the Tories and what’s he getting in return? I ask only because I find it baffling that anyone would chose to shower money on the shower that now constitute the party I used to vote for. Blue Labour will certainly not be getting money or votes from me.

HookesLaw

He won’t be getting more than Lord Sainsbury who got a ministers job for all his millions of donations.
It looks like he made all his money under New Labour.